


everything's going to be okay

by spheeris1



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, Mentions of Suicide, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spheeris1/pseuds/spheeris1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU :: one-shot split into two parts :: Piper POV :: companion piece to 'maybe you've been wrong all along' :: "Where have you been? Well, that's a long story that no one has really asked about in a long time. And maybe Piper hasn't felt like telling it anyway, better suited to taking off instead of talking."</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything's going to be okay

**. . .**

A few people used to stop her, used to want to talk and figure out where she's been, but there are only so many vague answers that a person can hear before they realize that whatever gossip they are aiming for isn't going to happen. And they lose interest, they say something general in its politeness - _“Say hello to your mother, alright? Don't be a stranger, hmm?”_ \- and then they go back to the edges of their manicured lawns, back to shiny SUV's and to scolding rambunctious dogs, back to the sweet fever dream of the suburbs.

And Piper goes back to running – breathe in, breathe out, repeat; running until she hits that all too familiar wall, slamming first into her lungs and secondly into her legs, and then it is hands on knees and gasping into the damp silence of these clean streets. Oh, she's tried to push it a few times, lengthening her stride as her chest heaves with the effort, but it is always the same... 

…in the end, the wall always wins.

/ /

_Where have you been?_

Well, that's a long story that no one has really asked about in a long time. And maybe Piper hasn't felt like telling it anyway, better suited to taking off instead of talking. The lesson learned all those years ago: don't ask, don't tell, conceal conceal conceal. Of course, secrets take their toll, don't they?

Piper comes back to herself, though, and she feels a hand sliding roughly around her thigh and they are never gentle enough, they are never clever enough, they are never soft enough and so neither is she. And he grunts into her neck, finished before they even got started, and she doesn't offer up an understanding smile, she just smirks and pushes him back and watches him until he gets the point, until he pays her and until he walks away.

_I've been in hiding..._

Alex – because that's her name, because Piper has said it now and there's no going back from that – doesn't pry, doesn't needle Piper with questions, and something within Piper's bones settles for a just a little bit. It's not love, there's no such thing as love, but Alex stays the night and sometimes Piper cannot sleep and so she drinks coffee and she plays those tapes in that beat-up old boombox – headphones on, volume up high – and she stares at this woman in her bed, this woman with lips slack and an arm tucked under the pillow and with one leg exposed - so totally peaceful.

It won't last, it never does, but Piper feels a pang of envy for this calm on display, for this second of tranquility so close to her fingertips and yet so far away from her grasp.

Piper comes back to herself, though. Piper comes back to herself again and again.

_...that's where I've been._

/ /

_A week away from her seventeenth birthday and Danny dumps a load of cassette tapes onto her unmade bed. Her face must look like a question mark and something resembling a sigh slips out of his mouth._

_“You're always stealing them anyway.”_

_He's always so fucking pissy, so mad about everything these days, and she doesn't 'steal' his tapes; she borrows them and she always gives them back – eventually._

_She flips him off but she doesn't tell him to take the tapes away. She'll keep every single one of them if that's how he's going to be about it. But he actually grins at her, brief but it's there, and she is suddenly struck by the look in his eyes, how tired they seem in this morning light..._

_And then she blinks. And then he walks out of her room. And then the moment is over._

/ /

Sometimes she jogs past their house, between the hours when her father will be at work and when her mother will be out running errands. Sometimes she slows down, gaze sliding over the spaces she knows so very well – the row of pale green hostas that line the walk-way, that one off-white shutter with the chipped paint, the darkened window panes that lead to where she once slept. Sometimes she stops in the middle of this road and she waits for the front door to open, waits for someone to call her name and for her own head to turn at the sound.

Sometimes, not often but sometimes, Piper wants to come home – like nothing ever happened, like they aren't all just fragments of whatever they used to be, like they are a family once more.

Sometimes.  
Not often but sometimes.

/ /

She doesn't lose control. That's not the smart choice out here, out here with the hardened features and the loose morals, and she's got a pretty face, she knows it and she uses it, too; she uses it to lure in idiotic men and get drinks and then knock those men down a peg or two, she uses it to say wicked things and get away with it, she uses it and she uses it well.

She doesn't care about any of them. That's not how the game is played out here, out here with the glimpse of tender skin and the sting of bittersweet seduction, and she's a fist beneath all these open hands – no easy mark, oh no, not her – and there won't be a kiss on the cheek or a some sloppy morning after because this is business, not pleasure, and she's not here for anything more than that...

...she's not here to have a good time.

And Piper never lets Alex have her way, not really, but the woman seems to like the fact that Piper can dismantle her – a tiny bit of fight that soon falls away, all hot breath and tremulous moans – and Piper catalogs the details of these moments, where to touch and for how long and how hard to push and when to let up, and Alex's whole body curves upwards and pulls taut, hips rolling and jerking due to the ministrations of Piper's talented tongue--

_you are lovely, you are so lovely, you are so goddamn lovely_

\--and Alex comes hard and Alex comes fast and Piper is almost uncomfortably turned-on and Alex will fall asleep and Piper will take a shower and touch herself and do her best to ignore all the rules she's beginning to break.

/ /

_The backpack is heavy on her shoulder, that's what she is thinking about – complaining about, really – when she walks through the door but she stops short when she sees her mother in the foyer, neither talking nor moving, and that's when Piper notices a man speaking with her father in the lounge._

_Her father, expression blank as a piece of paper, saying words that she can't hear, and the man in the lounge – notebook in hand, pencil going back and forth – spares Piper a glance, gaze heavy before it slides away, and that's when she knows that something is wrong, something is really, really wrong._

_Her mother isn't doing anything at all. Just standing there, just staring off at nothing.  
Her father's lips continue to shift, sentences lost no matter how hard Piper tries to catch them._

_And it just makes sense to ask, doesn't it? It just makes sense because everyone is here, everyone but..._

_“Where's Danny?”_

/ /

There was a party – a shitty party at that – and she was a little wasted and she didn't really know anyone there and some guy approached her with his half-empty bottle of cheap beer, all grins and no charm.

And he tried his lines.  
And he tried his jokes.  
And he tried and he tried and she told him that the only way he'd ever get laid is if he paid for it.

He stomped off, ego bruised, and she went back to drinking and the night could have ended like that, it could have been that one barbed comment and nothing more, but two hours later, he came back around – drunker than before, more pathetic, too – and he pressed a fifty dollar bill into her hand.

And Piper could spend days upon days psycho-analyzing her motives, dissecting her emotional state in that moment, she could trot out the tried and true spiel from every self-help book ever written – self-destructive, repressed, sorrow and guilt masked by sexual promiscuity – but alcohol wasn't helping, it never really did, and Piper liked how desperate this guy was, Piper liked having a kind of power over him, and Piper didn't want to think about that other life, that other life with those missing pieces, and so she took his money and told him what he could do and what he couldn't and it was so easy.

It was just so fucking easy to be this Piper and forget everything – and everyone – else.

/ /

Piper laces up her sneakers, feeling restless, and she runs and runs and runs; she runs from this building, from these cracked sidewalks and trash-lined alleyways, she runs by the water – murky as it laps by her side – and she skirts the edges of this city, of these monuments to high finance, and she pushes a bit harder this time because she knows this skyscraper, she knows this particular form of metal lines and endless reflections.

It's where her father works.

And if she were to close her eyes, she could see his face. And if she were to see his face, she would be looking back through time, back to when she was a little girl and he was someone special, someone amazing.

But she pushes a bit harder, gaze unfocused as she hits a crosswalk, and a car blows its horn at her angrily and she stumbles and she curses and she is out of breath as she reaches the other side - out of breath and with lungs burning and the sweat must be sliding down into her eyes because they burn, too, and the sweat must be rolling down her cheeks as well because...

...because Piper doesn't cry about those things anymore, because Piper hasn't cried in such a long time, because tears don't change anything at all and Piper doesn't care about those things anymore...

...Piper doesn't care about anything anymore.

/ /

They have an understanding, though it all gets blurry now and then, but still, they hold fast to certain conventions of their lives – Alex doesn't talk about her work and Piper doesn't talk about her work either, Alex still pays her and Piper still takes the money. 

And so what if they kiss once in a while ( _mouths hot and breathless, so goddamn delicious_ )?  
And so what if Alex hangs around some ( _lingering on the couch, half-dressed and soft to the touch_ )?  
And so what if they drink coffee in Piper's tiny kitchen, as if this is normal ( _as if they are just regular fucking people who like each other more than they ever should_ )?

Because they are the buyer and the bought and that's all they'll ever be, that's all they'll ever allow themselves to be.

/ /

No one told her the rules, no one has threatened her, the other women around here don't talk to her and she doesn't talk to them, but Piper wears her indifference on her sleeve and it comes off like street wisdom and no one is the wiser...

...it is the ultimate fantasy, a double life lived so seamlessly, and the slow reveal of her pearly-white smile suckers everyone eventually.

And maybe she was born to be a liar, maybe she was made to be a lovely little con – sweet on the outside, sour beneath the surface – but this guy doesn't care and neither does she and he falls onto her bed with a dirty grin and she strips down to nothing but her skin and she's lost count of how many men have waited with eager hands for her to descend, she's lost count of the grunted-out orgasms and of the crumpled bills left on the floor, she's lost count of all the hours spent in this room with strangers.

Piper says all the right words until he comes, eyes squeezed shut and face strained, and he finally rolls away and she thinks about the grocery shopping she needs to do and the laundry she needs to take downstairs and his expression is just like the rest of them – a tint of regret among the relief – but she stands up without shame, naked with her palm turned out, and no one told her the rules but they were buried inside of her anyway...

...the world takes from everyone and so does she.

/ /

_She can't stop staring at his neck._

_No amount of make-up can make it fully go away, a blemish beyond caked on foundation, and Piper can see it so plainly; Piper can see where Danny took his life – a ring of black-blue, a fine line where air was trapped and then stolen – Piper can see where Danny strangled and swung until he was gone._

_She can't stop seeing it, even when she closes her eyes, and so the vision repeats like a horrible movie clip, over and over, and she screams into her pillow and slams her fists into her mattress and she cries and cries and cries._

_And her mother roams the house like a ghost._  
_And her father never comes home at night._  
_And Piper doesn't talk to anyone about anything._

_But she plays the tapes, long past used-to-be bedtimes, she plays them repeatedly and she memorizes the lyrics and sings along with her horrible voice - “...I can't imagine my destination, my intention, ask my opinion but no excuse... my feelings still remain, my feelings still remain...”_

_And Piper tucks herself into the corners of Danny's bedroom, mind full of stupid songs and so much anger, so much sadness, and she falls apart._

_She falls apart and she never comes back together again._

/ /

Piper isn't one for drinking much these days but Alex has such an imploring stare - it's disconcerting how hard it is to deny that look - and so she is loosely on Alex's arm tonight, moving through some club that is more loud than interesting, and the alcohol keeps coming and Alex's mouth is close to Piper's ear and when they kiss – because they do, because they do that more and more lately – Alex's lips taste like something expensive and, of course, that's a promise, too, isn't it?

The vow of monetary gain, stronger than any marital bond, and Alex obviously has cash to burn.

But the more she drinks, the more the facade slips, and it's been a long damn time since she's been anyone other than a woman for hire, anyone other than a secret that someone keeps, and Alex dances with her and Piper finds herself drowning in the other woman's smile and her head is swimming and she knows that none of this is real, none of this can ever be real, can it?

Piper tilts her head back, though, and she moves to this song like it is the best song ever created and she can feel Alex's hands on her hips, a sure and steady hold, and they move like lovers in this crowd, like actual goddamn people in love with each other, and Piper visibly trembles when Alex's breath coasts over her cheek.

“You are so fucking beautiful, Pipes...”

And if she weren't so stupidly drunk, if she weren't in the midst of letting go for the first time in forever, then maybe she'd be able to recover quickly with the utterance of that nickname, but the syllables break the skin and go straight for her heart and suddenly there he is--

_“C'mon, catch me if you can...” and Danny sticks his tongue out at her, always faster, always snatching her toys just to taunt her and tease her and she hates him for it, she hates him and screams until her mother comes in, exasperated by the both of them, and Danny throws the stuffed bear at Piper's head and rolls his eyes._

_“God, Pipes, you are such a baby.”_

\--and Alex has no clue, of course, it's just an endearment and they've been toying with boundaries for days and days now, but Piper freezes on this dance-floor and whatever Alex is saying cannot be heard over the roar of all that's been held at bay for so many years and Piper is crying, she knows that she is crying, but all she can see is Danny's face; Danny's face on that day in her room, with his sad damn gaze and cassettes falling from his hands, Danny and whatever he wasn't telling, Danny and whatever was killing him, Danny and a noose that no one knew to look for.

Piper pushes away from Alex, stumbling through all these pointless people, shoving her way to the door and back to the real world, back to this filthy city and to the endless anonymity, back to where she's just another person with tears to spare and with a story left untold...

…back to where she's just another no one with a whole lot of forgetting to do.

**. . .**

**[tbc]**

**Author's Note:**

> been itching to write a Piper-centric story set in this alternate universe I've conjured up  
> soundtrack to be found here: https://youtu.be/rt0-KelIjrU?list=PLgC3pQ5FvNyGLed0YX76M2DttttdOR3NV


End file.
